A Five Year Stop Over in Hell's Kitchen

Samuel Simmons or Symmons

Samuel Simmons and Hannah Maria Shackells Simmons lived with their six children on the British Coast in Bristol, Gloucester, at the time the 1851 Census was taken. Samuel was a cotton warper working in a factory while Hannah was a bobbin net mender and may have done her work at home.  The eldest son, William, 16, was listed as a tin man, while Henry, 12, and Mary, 9, worked as general laborers.  The younger children, Hannah Maria, 7, John, 5, and Sarah, 2, were apparently too young to work in the factories, listed as scholars or school children.  However, Family tradition says that the daughter, Hannah, by the time she was eight years old worked in a factory on a loom.  It was the job of "an old woman [to knock] her off her stool when Hannah would get tired and fall asleep. . . (1)." Since her father was also a cotton weaver, they may have worked in the same factory.  

Hannah Maria Shackells or Sheckles Simmons

They were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having been baptized in 1849. About six years after their conversion, Hannah and Samuel decided to immigrate to America to join others of this religion.  They left the dock at Liverpool with their children, sailing on the vessel Columbia. They landed in New York City on New Year’s Day 1857. (See note) They had been seven weeks on the ocean.  In later years the youngest child told her own daughter how tiresome and discouraging was the trip they endured.  She recalled that “Some days the ship would go forward and some days backward, depending on the way the wind blew.  They were seasick and their food consisted mostly of sea biscuits and hard tack…(1).” 

Hannah Maria recounted to her children that “the ocean trip was a rough one, and at one time the captain of the ship told the Mormons on board it looked like they would be lost, and requested that they pray for the safety of the vessel and her passengers(2).”

“They had very little money when they landed in New York, and to make matters worse [Samuel] had his pockets picked and lost every cent he had.  In order to get food for the family . . . Henry took his hat in his hand and went on the street and begged.  They stayed at Castle Gardens until they found a home. . . [Samuel] was a weaver and soon obtained work in the Higgins Carpet Factory.”  While most of the children probably tried to obtain work, Martha, at least, was able to attend school in New York.  She “was a poor little girl and the better dressed children teased her and she said, ‘I’ll go ‘ome and tell me farther,’ [which] made matters worse.”  Afterwards she determined to learn the American vernacular so as not to be teased anymore.  Martha also recalled that she won a cape and bonnet for singing and dancing on the stage before she left New York (1).

The Higgins Carpet Factory was located in a working-class neighborhood of Manhattan full of immigrant families. A few years prior to the family's immigration, the Hudson River Railroad opened a station and freight yard at 30th Street and Eleventh Avenue, opening the way for industry and the workers that followed. "In the 1850s, brickyards, lumberyards, stables, warehouses, distilleries, iron foundries and slaughterhouses all prospered, employing cheap immigrant labor (3)." The carpet factory employed skilled European immigrants, including Samuel, and at least one of his children. Those workers lived in tenement buildings that were packed tightly in the neighborhoods.

Hell's Kitchen and Sebastopol

As more workers moved into this area of Manhattan later named Clinton, conditions became more oppressive. "The tenements became more and more crowded, with large families often crowded into two or three rooms in buildings with no plumbing. . . The origin of the nickname Hell's Kitchen is unknown. Some popular legends link it to a German couple named Heil who owned a diner near the docks whose name was mispronounced and became legend. One story relates it to a conversation between two cops watching a small riot on West 39th Street. "This place is hell itself," one cop supposedly said. "Hell's a mild climate," said another. This is Hell's Kitchen, no less(3)." Most of Samuel and Hannah's family were able to escape New York before the Roaring Days of the West Side when gangs ruled the streets and mob violence which "glowed, simmered, and frequently boiled over with crime and corruption" during the decades following the Civil War (4)."

Members of the family lived in New York for about five years, and continued to save money with the intent to travel to Salt Lake City. “At times they barely had enough to eat.  Once [Hannah, the daughter] said she was crying because of hunger, and Apostle John Taylor called and gave her a small bible with a bright clasp on it” to cheer her up (2).  During this time William married, had a little girl, died and was buried in Connecticut.  His wife, Mary Ann, returned to England, losing contact with her in-laws.  Henry also settled in the East, but the rest of the family made their way to Utah.  Samuel and Hannah’s daughter, Martha, and granddaughter, Myrtle, almost a half a century later

“went to New York to visit Uncle Henry, who was a widower at the time.  He had written that he would be very pleased to have them come . . . They were a little surprised to find that he was quite a wealthy man, owning a number of fine homes in the big city.  They had a very nice visit and he took them sightseeing every day and [Martha] could locate the places she knew as a child.  They visited the home, Castle Gardens and other places (1).”

When they had accumulated enough resources to “bring part of the family to Zion, as they called this part of the country (1)”, tradition tells that mother and father made arrangements for at least their two youngest girls, 17 year old Hannah and 14 year old Martha, to emigrate to the Salt Lake Valley.  “They went by train as far as Florence, near Omaha, and left there by ox team in Captain Horne’s company July 1st and arrived in Salt Lake City on Friday, September 13, 1861.”

Immigration Records. Ship Columbia, Hutchinson, Castle Gardens, New York. Here they were there visited and counseled by apostles Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor, George A. Smith and Erastus Snow.

1. The Life of Martha Simmons Jones Weaver written by an unnamed daughter.

2.  History of Rosel Hyde by Myrtle Stevens Hyde, originally recounted by Mary Ann Hyde Mortenson, daughter of Rosel Hyde and Hannah Mariah Simmons Hyde.

3. Gwertzman, Michael. Keeping the 'Kitchen' in Clinton: Community Efforts to Resist Gentrification. 1997. http://hellskitchen.net/reports/kik/kik01.html 

4. O'Connor, Richard. Hell's Kitchen: The Roaring Days of New York's Wild West Side.  http://hellskitchen.net/about.html

Photograph of Hell's Kitchen taken by Jacob Riis. Found online.

Photographs of Samuel and Hannah Mariah found at Ancestry.com

Note: Mary Ann Mortenson dates their arrival as 1850 while the obituary notice in the Davis County Clipper for Hannah Maria Shackells Simmons lists 1856 or 1858. The history written by Myrtle Hyde gives the date as 1855 when they traveled seven weeks on the ocean. The history of Martha Weaver states that they arrived in New York on New Year's Day 1856. The Mormon Migration online site provides more details, giving the journey's beginning as Tuesday, November 18, 1856, and the arrival as January 1, 1857.

http://mormonmigration.lib.byu.edu/Search/showDetails/db:MM_MII/t:account/id:274/keywords:samuel+symons